Spring 2019 - 59885 - PA 380L - Topics in Public Policy and Law

This course will focus on a variety of subjects that explore why America’s middle-class struggles to achieve the American Dream. Topics we will explore: how labor laws have helped create and maintain the income inequality gaps, how housing laws have helped create economically (and racially) segregated neighborhoods, and how education laws make it harder for high school and college students to graduate and be prepared to succeed in the current labor market. Middle-income families are no longer the majority of American households. A steady succession of federal and state laws and policies (especially labor, consumer lending, housing and tax policies) have destroyed the middle-class. We now have enormous income and wealth inequality gaps between average Americans and the country’s richest households. The focus will be on ways laws and policies can help reverse the economic fortunes of Americans who aspire to become and remain middle-class. Despite the heavy policy-focus of this course, you will be required to propose concrete solutions to the problems (housing, education, financial services, employment, etc.) facing the middle class.